96: Chapter 96 Beneath the Spider's Web (Part 2)

The official documents received by the planetary governors were worded gently:

"To support the urgent needs of the expeditionary fleet, it is hereby verified that your world's ammunition tithe quota shall be increased by 30%. In matters of urgency, expediency is required; we hope for your cooperation."

Cooperation?

How were they to cooperate?

Three worlds of Viridis were fighting Greenskins.

Two worlds were suffering from famine.

There was another world—one that had just finished a war, where the smoke of battle had not yet dissipated, and the magazines in the hands of the defenders were still warm.

And several other worlds had already rebelled or even declared independence.

The governors did not answer. They simply picked up their quill pens, signed "Read" on the documents, and handed them to their subordinates.

In a sector at war, the scarcity of ammunition already required external supply, yet such an order had fallen upon them.

"Collect it from the warzone."

"But sir, those troops are still— "

"I know. Execute the order."

Thus, the Imperial Aquila lander descended before the still-smoking trenches.

The double-headed eagle emblem on the ship's hull, with its fresh paint, was glaringly conspicuous under the smoke-filled sky.

The hatch opened.

A squad of Kasrkin stepped out in silence.

Their armor was stained with the dust of the previous world, and there was no sympathy in their eyes, only the lingering exhaustion of having carried out orders.

The leader, Sergeant Pya, held a document in her hand—a copy of the requisition order that had been passed down through layers to this planet.

The Commander in the trench looked up, watching the Imperial elites descending from the ship.

His gaze shifted from hope to confusion, and from confusion to a slow, heavy, and irreversible despair.

"Are you here to... collect taxes?"

"Ammunition. The tithe. This is the requisition order."

"We just finished fighting a war."

"I know."

"My soldiers have no spare ammunition left; we have even started using reloaded rounds."

"I know."

Silence.

The Commander looked down at the pistol at his waist, which had only one magazine left.

He drew it and placed it on the table.

Then he turned and shouted into the trench:

"Bring out the remaining ammunition—all of it."

The soldiers were stunned.

"Bring it out! That is an order!"

He roared in anger, a somewhat hysterical roar, with tears shimmering in his eyes.

In his simple understanding, it was the blockage of the shipping lanes, the isolation of the sector, all for the greater picture he could not see.

"For the Emperor!"

His hoarse throat cracked with a shrill sound, until every bit of air in his lungs was squeezed dry, and his voice slowly faded into the air.

Crates of magazines, stained with blood and mud, were loaded onto the transport ship.

Some magazines were still warm—the temperature from having just been ejected from the chamber.

The sharp edges of the ammunition crates tore the porters' gloves, and blood seeped across the gray metal shells like flowers that had withered before they could even bloom.

The Commander took one last look at the containers.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something.

But in the end, he only uttered the phrase that had been carved into the bones of humanity within the Empire:

"May the Emperor protect us."

Pya did not respond.

She turned around, facing away from the Commander.

A sentence in Low Gothic was softly squeezed out through her teeth:

"He had better protect us all."

The reloaded ammunition requisitioned from the battlefields was continuously transported to Terra.

In the first week, the quotas for three sectors were all exceeded.

In the second week, even more arrived.

In the third week, the administrator of a central storage world stood atop that mountain of ammunition crates and dialed the Tax Office.

"We can't store any more."

"How much?"

"Seven times more than the requisition order required."

"Who ordered the increase?"

"Every level added some. Every line added a little. It adds up to this amount."

"Send it back."

"We can't send it back. It's already been collected. The next batch arrives in three days. The warehouse is on Departmento Munitorum territory; if we don't clear it out—it will crush the continental shelf."

"Then... process it according to protocol."

Protocol...

It was called "periodic destruction of excess inventory."

A week later, on a Terra Tax Office storage world.

That batch of reloaded ammunition, stained with the blood of three worlds, forcibly requisitioned from the defenders, and transported across dozens of light-years to Terra, was thrown, crate by crate, into the void, where they would eventually sink into the star of the storage world's system.

Jean Sart stood on the observation deck.

His eyelashes trembled slightly.

He remembered when he was a child, the old butler in his family's manor teaching him to read.

The old butler pointed to the word on the parchment and told him, enunciating each syllable:

"Young Master Sartre, this word is read as 'tax'. It is very important. More important than your life."

At the time, he had only vaguely sensed a part of it—the part a lord needed to know, the part that would invite an Exterminatus.

But now he perceived another part.

On Terra, every speck of dust had its own thoughts and its own master.

A sentence his lord had once said to him echoed in his ears at this moment:

"Sartre, remember. The bureaucracy of the Empire produces nothing. It only consumes. It consumes supplies, it consumes lives, it consumes time."

Now he understood.

The words engraved on those shell casings, the final cries of the Commander in the trench, that flower that seeped across the metal shell, withering before it could even bloom.

The protocol was complete.

The documents were signed.

The requisition order was finished.

The transport ships were lining up in orderly rows, heading toward the Ultramar sector.

Everything was perfect; everyone would be commended, and his lord would gain a crack to tear open the power of the Terra nobility.

It was just that: the transport ships were loaded with standard ammunition shipped from Forge Worlds, while what was being destroyed was the reloaded ammunition scraped from the battlefield.

Late that same night, the Master of Administratum returned to the Hall of Political Views.

He had just returned from the High Lords' meeting.

At the twelve-seat round table, eleven people listened in silence as he explained the reform plan for the tithe, nodded in silence, and dispersed in silence.

Everything was as usual.

Only the Admiral, when the meeting ended, spoke a sentence behind him in a casual, almost offhand tone:

"Lord Master of Administratum, I heard—your people requisitioned a batch of reloaded ammunition in the Viridis sector?"

At that moment, the wind at the entrance of the Hall of Political Views stagnated.

He turned around.

"Yes. To support the Regent's expeditionary fleet."

"Heh."

The Admiral chuckled, then turned and disappeared into the end of the corridor.

But that chuckle was sharper than any interrogation.

The Master of Administratum stood at the entrance of the Hall of Political Views, feeling a chill rise from his back.

Viridis.

The Tulip family.

They were their family's allies.

They were one of the key forces that had helped him sit in this position.

He had not yet had the chance to visit them, nor had he had the chance to thank them for their support.

And his people had already issued a requisition order to their territory.

He walked quickly back into the Hall of Political Views and pushed open the heavy wooden door.

He walked to his desk and picked up the archived copy of the requisition order.

Signatory: Jean Sart.

Executing sector: Viridis.

He stared at those two words for a long time.

Jean Sart was someone he had arranged to be placed there personally—loyal, reliable, and efficient.

He knew he hadn't done it on purpose.

But that was exactly the problem.

The Master of Administratum slowly put down the document.

He turned to look out the window.

The Terra Imperial Palace was brightly lit in the night, its golden dome refracting a silent light under the lamps.

It had been ten thousand years; this palace had seen countless people like him walk in, and had seen countless people like him leave. They were simply swallowed by this palace, leaving not even an echo behind.

He thought he was laying out a plan.

He thought he had chosen a safe route of cutting in from the periphery and slowly infiltrating.

But tonight he realized: from the first day he stepped onto Terra, he had not been on his own chessboard.

He thought he was making the moves.

In reality, he was just a piece on the chessboard.

He sat behind that ebony table named "Perseverance."

Spread out on the desk was a requisition order.

A requisition order issued by his trusted aide, perfect, impeccable, and procedurally flawless.

"Perseverance" had been silent for ten thousand years.

It would continue to remain silent.

And the person sitting behind it felt, for the first time, something more terrifying than political failure: loss of control.

He put the document into a drawer, then picked up his quill pen and began to review the next document.

The night outside the window remained silent.

Inside the Hall of Political Views, there was only the rustling sound of the quill pen across the parchment.

Like a river.

A river flowing silently in the darkness, not knowing where it was flowing.